


Jewels

by Ashling



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, their own peculiar and particular romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 14:15:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15664857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Grace and Tommy, four memories, 400 words apiece.





	Jewels

**Emerald**

He takes Grace to Ireland when she’s still wearing the wrong ring, and she allows herself to be taken. They wind up in a pub in Galway talking to her mother’s cousin’s ex-husband, who warms to Tommy as soon as she mentions the 179th. He was in the Somme too, he says, thus the missing ear. Tommy smiles a little in acknowledgment and says nothing.

This country allows him to be someone else without the razor in his cap, as long as he’s quiet, and he finds a great deal of pleasure in simply sitting on the stool, with his hand on her knee under the bar, not doing a goddamn thing. Gentle, watching her.

She’s so comfortable there, it’s astounding. She laughs like laughter is free, when as far as he’s known her, it’s as rare as jewels. She talks with her chin is in her hand, fingertips buried in her own soft flaxen hair, and as the last of New York City slips away, she blossoms into someone unbearably touchable. His fingers tighten a little. She makes their excuses, and they slip away.

When they’re standing in the mirrored hotel elevator, she says, “Were you angry?” in a voice that would sound unconcerned to any other ear, and it hurts him a little. Because they are new to each other again, because they have lost so much time.

He shakes his head. A dozen other Tommys, reflected in the mirrors, shake their heads. There’s a better answer, but it should wait for the room. A dozen Graces look pale and composed in their mirrored lines, and suddenly Tommy is done, done, done. Elevator or not, he turns to her.

“I wanted—” and his hand is on her cheek, his hand is on her hip, his face is so close that he can see every tiny movement of her eyes. He can see the exact moment when she understands he wanted nothing more than to be alone with her. Her eyes are the color of new grass under a faint cloud’s shadow, cool and clear as a running stream, and her lips part for him and her hands are tender on the nape of his neck and the elevator stops at their floor and they don’t part from each other, can’t. They are learning how to do this all over again.

They have all the time in the world.

 

 

 

**Ruby**

Hand white-knuckled on the handle of the telephone, Grace can almost taste how angry she is. She know she must sound controlled, words coming fast but rhythmic, like the bullets from a Lewis machine gun. In the background, Tommy hovers, having just put Charlie to sleep in his crib, and she knows that this is perhaps unnecessary and she knows that this is perhaps all about something else but he is _hers_ and she won’t stop for anything, won’t stop for anyone.

When at last she hangs up and turns around, Tommy comes to her and she fists a hand in his collar and pulls him closer.

“They’re right, you know,” he murmurs, the faint traces of a sardonic smile on his lips. “I am a dirty fucking gangster. And a gypsy. And—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“And they’re your family.”

“ _You’re_ my family,” she says fiercely, and he’s still trying to play this off as a small matter, so she grips his face in both her hands and says, “Tommy. There is no one else. There will never be anyone else. I have one allegiance now, and I need you to know—”

“I know.” He goes steady and warm, like she’s a skittish horse. His hands are on her hips, thumbs making soothing circles on the silk of her dress.

“Nobody else.”

“I know.”

She can see that he does, but she wants to say it anyway. “Only you. The rest can go to hell.”

When Grace kisses him, it is a promise, a declaration that if this puts her in enmity with the rest of the world, then so be it. He is good to her, and she wants to make him feel good, and the victory lies in the fact that she can. When their clothes are a heap of scarlet and white and black on the table, she mounts him, the way she knows he likes, the way that makes him shudder underneath her at all that sensation, fingers between her legs, timing it right. This is how it should be, she thinks. There must be nothing between them anymore.

When they’re sprawled on the bed, some time later, he quotes her back at herself. “The rest can go to hell, eh?” he says. His body has gone lax with satisfaction, but his blue eyes are alight with mischief. “What about Charlie?”

She dimples. “Charlie can stay.”

 

 

 

**Diamond**

Tommy bars the door to the cellar and sits heavily behind it. Grace kneels and presses her handkerchief to his head to stanch the blood.

“I’m sorry about your shoes,” he says. They were brand new, Parisian.

Grace shrugs. “I’m sorry about your head.”

He doesn’t know what to say. “I suppose we can strike this place off the list.”

“Mm...I didn’t like the look of the dining room.”

Tommy sighs. House hunting is not supposed to be life-threatening. He reaches in his pocket to get a cigarette, and... _shit_.

“What?”

He closes his eyes. He ought to go back up there and get it, remaining assassins be damned.

“Tommy.”

There’s a soft click, that of a particular hinge. He opens his eyes.

Grace holds the little velvet box open, with the ring nestled safely inside.

“It fell out of your jacket while you were wrestling with the third,” she says.

Suddenly, Tommy is painfully aware of their situation: the cigarette their only light, the stone hard and cold, the earthy smell, his own hurt head. It’s not much of a wound, but he feels disappointed. Worse, he feels disappointing. He can’t find the words for it.

“This is not how I wanted it to happen,” he says.

“Don’t worry. You and I are not engaged, Thomas Shelby. Not yet. Buy me a house, then we’ll talk.”

He looks at her properly. She has her lips pressed against a smile threatening to escape. It _is_ funny, and fuck it feels good to look at that smile. Tommy reaches for her, and shortly his smile and hers both disappear into a long, deep kiss.

“I don’t need red roses or an orchestra,” she says, after. “Or champagne or a house or any of it.”

Of course she doesn’t need all that. She doesn’t even need a gun. This is the woman who, when confronted with three murderers, immediately ducked low and took off her shoes. This is the woman that buried the heel of her right shoe into the eye of an attacker. This is the woman that grabbed the telephone and called for help. This is the woman he’s going to marry.

Grace doesn’t need grandeur or drama in her proposal; she doesn’t need anything from him but himself. But he makes a mental note to call a florist as soon as they get home. And maybe a conductor...

 

 

 

**Amethyst**

Tommy pads into the bedroom and flings himself down on the mattress besides Grace. She strokes his clean, damp hair with her right hand as her left hand holds her book.

He says nothing. It’s been a long day for him, she knows, culminating in the wrestling match of a lifetime with their son, who’s lately taken to squirming and screaming throughout his daily bath in a way that leaves Tommy soaked head to toe by the time it’s all over. Then Charlie needs to be read half a dozen books in order to sleep. So it makes sense that Tommy has nothing left to say, and Grace is fine with that.

The sun has already set, and outside the sky darkens from indigo to pitch black. Finally, Grace finishes her chapter and glances over, only to find Tommy staring steadily at her, propped up against the pillows, customary cigarette in hand.

“What are you thinking?”

He smiles, faintly. “I’m not sure I should say.”

Grace likes the sound of that. “Is it scandalous?”

“Very.”

“Then you should certainly say it.”

“I was thinking...I may be in love with my wife.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty fucking sure, yeah.”

Grace puts her book down on the nightstand. “That is very unusual, Mr. Shelby.”

“I know.” His smile doesn’t fit the part, all wide and lazy and self-satisfied, like a cat’s. Gorgeous. “D’you think there’s something wrong with me?”

“Something? No. There’s several things wrong with you,” she says dryly. “Just like me.” She turns off the lamp and settles into the crook of his arm, taking his cigarette for herself. His fingertips skim along her hair.

“I think I have to object,” he murmurs.

“No, it’s the truth.” She stubs the cigarette out in the ashtray, then turns into him, one hand on his chest. “There’s many things. But this isn’t one of them.”

After a moment, he kisses her forehead in reply. Then he’s asleep.

When they first married, she made a point of wearing lace to bed, often lilac, a color that she knew looked good on her, but now she’s in one of his shirts, a white thing with a bloodstain none of the maids can get out on the sleeve, and he snores into her right ear and they’re safe and she thinks, just then, that she has never loved anybody more.

Then she sleeps too.


End file.
